


You Have Suffered Enough

by BlessedAreTheFandoms



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alien Biology, Confrontations, Dangerous missions prompt love confessions, Enabran Tain's A+ Parenting, Even though it's very unhealthy sometimes, Explicit Consent, First Time, Garak gets in his own way, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Interspecies Awkwardness, Julian is done letting you be a jerk, M/M, Relationship Negotiation, Richard Bashir's A+ Parenting, Season/Series 05, Very necessary ChUen fondling, Whoever said words will never hurt me had not met Elim Garak, Wingman Kira Nerys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 08:28:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29930682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlessedAreTheFandoms/pseuds/BlessedAreTheFandoms
Summary: When his life does not fall apart after the revelation of his enhancements, Julian Bashir decides time is precious and goes to talk with one of his oldest friends about who they are to each other.Elim Garak, however, does not like to admit to definitions, even when they are exactly what he wants, and he knows just how to hurt them both so that he will not have to have that conversation.
Relationships: Elim Garak & Kira Nerys, Julian Bashir/Elim Garak, Tekeny Ghemor & Kira Nerys
Comments: 44
Kudos: 109





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hilariously, this was supposed to be some steam-releasing PWP and then Garak fought me the whole damn way until a bunch of angst/plot/relationship development happened, so, erm, here. Have a thing. It explicitly references three episodes in season five: By Inferno's Light, Dr. Bashir I Presume, and Ties of Blood and Water.
> 
> Title is from the song [Falling Slowly](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8mtXwtapX4) by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova.

Julian Bashir fell lightly against the turbolift wall as he called out the command to return him home, his whole body feeling electric from his evening at Quark’s with Miles O’Brien—Miles, who was still playing darts with him, who was still joking with him, who saw the enhancements and simply moved the line from which Julian was allowed to throw.

Miles, who didn’t tell Julian he was an unlovable freak.

It had been an incredible week; Julian almost felt his head spinning from the intensity of it, from the whiplash of being so certain that everything he knew would end to hearing his friends—his _friends_ , Julian whispered again to himself with a delighted grin—simply adjust their understanding of him and keep going.

His friends.

“Computer, habitat level three,” Julian called out, changing his destination. He bounced on his feet until the door slid open and he strode out, realizing the one friend with whom he had not debriefed not only Julian’s secrets but this friend’s as well.

Julian’s steps slowed as he approached the door; it was late, he realized, and he really was tired. It had been quite the week. Month. Year. Perhaps this was best left until the morning.

_And who knows what the morning will bring?_ chided a voice in his mind. He had been kidnapped and replaced by an alien, nearly drummed out of Starfleet for being an Augment, and he could at any moment be called away on a mission he did not survive. If not tonight, when?

Steeling himself, Julian pushed the chime to alert the inhabitant of someone on his doorstep. He stopped himself from pressing it again, realizing that his sense of urgency might not be shared by the one who may have been asleep.

“Doctor,” said Elim Garak as the door slid open. “To what do I owe the honor of this late visit?”

“May—may I come in?” Julian asked, his voice catching on the request. He cursed inwardly.

Garak studied him for a moment before stepping aside in implicit invitation. Julian passed him—oh, how cursed his augmented senses were sometimes as his nose picked up the sharp bite of the Cardassian that was almost like pine needles, a smell he had gotten intimately familiar with in the nearness of the internment camp. Julian scolded himself into focus despite Garak’s slightly mussed hair that Julian wanted to see absolutely, wantonly disheveled; despite the looseness of Garak’s pajamas that looked indecently soft.

“Doctor?” queried Garak after Julian’s outward silence extended too long while he waged the inward battle of not flinging himself in relief and shock and pure lust at his friend.

“Yes,” said Julian. “Yes, sorry. Right. Ah; I know it’s late. I’m sorry if I woke you.”

“I was not asleep,” replied Garak, and Julian looked again at him with a physician’s eyes—Garak’s face was a little too drawn, his scales a little too pale, his body held rigidly even by the standards of his usual controlled grace.

“Have you been having nightmares?” Julian blurted.

Garak blinked at him. “Doctor, did you come to my quarters in a professional capacity?”

_Would you stop using my title if I said no?_ thought Julian, burying the flare of want. “No, actually, I didn’t. I came because we haven’t talked. Not really. Not since—not since we got back.”

“I admit that I have been remiss in scheduling lunch—”

“Not lunch, Garak,” Julian interrupted. “A conversation. A real, honest-to-God, decent conversation about the fact that we’ve been through…well, some shit, lately. I mean, I was _replaced_ for a month—”

“I do apologize for not catching that sooner—”

“And then you had to deal with your claustrophobia in the _worst_ way and Garak, God, your father _died_.” Julian ran a hand over his face, missing the stiffening of Garak’s body. “Enabran Tain was your _father_ —not that it doesn’t make a gruesome kind of sense, looking back, but still. And then my parents show up and nearly derail _my_ life and somehow I’m not a fugitive from the Federation but am still here and it’s just—Garak, it’s a _lot_. We’ve been through a _lot_ , and we haven’t talked about _any_ of it.”

“And you wish to do so.”

“Well, yes!” Julian looked at him, missing the ice in the blue eyes. “I mean, I’m an _Augment_ and you’re the _actual_ son of Tain and I feel like we should, I don’t know, name that to each other.”

“You have named it.”

“Come on, Garak, you know what I mean.”

“I’m afraid I do not, Doctor,” said Garak, shifting backwards, creating space between them. “Nor do I understand why you feel this is so necessary at this hour of the night.”

“I am sorry to come to you this late,” said Julian, realizing that they were still standing. “May I sit?”

Garak pressed his lips together. “Doctor, why are you here?”

Julian finally heard the distance in the tone. He picked through the many reasons, trying to decide which one sounded the least desperate, the least hungry to know that nothing had changed despite everything having changed. “I need to know you don’t think I’m a freak,” he said, surprising himself with the honesty.

Garak’s eyeridges jumped. “Should I?” he asked.

Julian fidgeted. “I mean, I don’t know how Cardassians feel about genetic manipulation.” He hugged his arms around himself, glad for their length. “And I don’t know how _you_ feel about…well, we spent a lot of time together at the camp and you—you let me in on one of your biggest secrets. You let me be part of an incredibly personal moment—and I’m grateful, I’m so honored by that,” insisted Julian, looking Garak in the eye before dropping his head toward the floor. “But the fact that I _didn’t_ tell you about—about this, about me, and that you were—that you were sometimes even sharing bedspace with an _Augment_ …” The name dropped from his tongue like bitter acid, burning the air through which it fell.

Garak relaxed slightly. “Cardassians do not consider genetic manipulation illegal,” he said, carefully choosing his words. “And I do not consider it detrimental to continued association with you, especially given that it is not news to me.”

Julian’s head shot up. “You—you _knew_?” he stammered.

Garak tilted his head.

“For how long?!”

“Ah, you must allow me to keep some secrets, my dear doctor.”

Julian absorbed this, collapsing into Garak’s couch. Sighing in resignation, Garak crossed to perch on the other end.

“You probably looked me up after the wire,” Julian speculated. “So we’d be even, information-wise.”

Garak did not answer, refraining both from disabusing Julian of the notion that it had taken him that long to delve into the doctor’s background and from admitting that no amount of information would make them “even” in Garak’s eyes. It was never about an even exchange. It was always about the doctor knowing far, far too much about the disgraced spy.

“Because—because I know it was a lot, to let me stay with you,” continued Julian. “And I’m…well, my father isn’t exactly Tain, but now you can see that I’m not unfamiliar with parents who try to remake you.”

Garak just barely refrained from sighing in exasperation at the comparison that was not a comparison at all. Richard Bashir had wanted a trophy.

Enabran Tain had created a knife.

“Doctor, I do appreciate your concern about our recent adventures, and I assure you with complete honesty that I do not think any less of you for the revelation of your familial history,” Garak said. “I hope that lays some of your fears to rest.”

“But what about yours?”

Garak stiffened. “My what?”

“Your fears, Garak. Yes, I am beyond glad to hear that you’re not bothered by me and delighted that we can continue to be—friends.” Julian frowned at himself for the hitch, _now is not the time_. “But as your friend, I would be remiss if I didn’t ask how you’re doing now that we’re back on the station and whether you’ve had the opportunity to…grieve, I suppose.”

“I am perfectly fine, Doctor.”

“Bollocks,” said Julian, his brow furrowed. “You said yourself you aren’t sleeping, and I can tell that’s not just a thing of tonight. Your scales are too pale, your eyes are bloodshot; you’re not okay, Garak.”

Garak stood in frustration and anger. “I had thought you were not here in a professional capacity.”

“No, I’m here as a friend—”

“—who has decided he has the liberty to disparage my appearance and dictate my mental capacities.”

“That’s not it at all, Garak!” Julian stood as well, gesturing passionately. “I want to help you! I want to _talk_ to you! I want to acknowledge that you’re _free_ now in a way you weren’t before and that we both went through so much in the camp together even though it was such a short time and how much I realized in solitary that when I got out and saw you—” Julian halted himself, his eyes wide.

Garak looked at him curiously. “You saw me?” he prompted.

“That, um, it was good. I was glad. To see you,” stammered Julian. He smoothed his shirtfront unnecessarily. “But you should talk about this. You _can_ talk about it, with me.”

“I _should_ , should I?” glowered Garak. “Do tell, Doctor, what _should_ I do next?”

“I’m only trying to help,” mumbled Julian.

“Then kindly let us resume our conversation at a decent hour with a decent topic.”

“But Garak, doesn’t it feel good to be, well, free of him?”

Garak inhaled sharply and he leaned into Julian, all patience gone. “What exactly do you mean by ‘free,’ Doctor? Do you think I am ‘free’ to waltz back to Cardassia, now? Do you think I am ‘free’ to wander about this station as though your Federation is not at war with my people? Do you think I am ‘free’ to simply fall into your arms?”

Both of them were shocked by that statement and Garak drew back, clearly having lost control of his own anger.

“Do—do you want…that, Garak?” asked Julian timidly.

Garak drew himself up, cursing the fact that he was in _pajamas_ of all things, scrabbling for some sense of dignity after such a foolish slip. “I _want_ to go to sleep, Doctor. I am glad to have been able to reassure you that I do not think less of you and hope that such is the case with all your friends here. With that clarity, I would ask that you leave and I will be sure to schedule a lunch between us at the next possible opportunity.”

“Garak—”

“Good night, Doctor Bashir.”

“I know you’re made of stern stuff, Garak, but even you need to acknowledge that being trapped in a small space for several days and losing your father while under threat of death is a pretty intense sequence of events. You should talk to somebody about that, even if it isn’t me; you can allow yourself to…to acknowledge what’s happened.”

“Ah, as you have?”

Julian’s eyes flashed in the dim light. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

Garak could almost see how his next words would cut the doctor bloody. He said them anyway. “I may not have been part of your wondrous salvation at the hands of Starfleet’s finest—who, I’m sure, asked for very little in return for their magnanimity and were more than happy to welcome you back into the fold without any kind of well-hidden catch—but this station does love its gossip. I hear you parted on rather cordial terms with your parents, not saying a word against them as they left for Earth. It is rich indeed for you to give me such freedom to acknowledge anything when you are so wound into that Federation ideal of playing nice even to the ones of whom _you_ have been so ashamed for so many years.”

Jaw tightening, Julian took in a slow breath. “Station gossip is an incomplete source, Garak, you know that. You don’t have any idea what I did or didn’t do in conversation with my parents.”

“You would have me believe that you who are so worried about the _wrong impression_ would do anything other than swallow their good graces after you had so deliberately cultivated distance? Come, Doctor, I thought I was the liar. It is perfectly conventional to admit that we all have our little abuses we accept.”

Julian rocked back as though Garak had slapped him. Garak almost closed his eyes at the look of betrayal on Julian’s face, the hurt that even the camp had not been able to inflict. _But these quarters are no stranger to my cruelty to you, Doctor,_ Garak thought to himself.

“I realized in solitary that it was you I wanted to see,” Julian said, his voice so full of sorrow Garak could almost taste it in the air between them. “And then you were there, and I realized it would be okay. _I_ would be okay, because you lie and you maim and you keep secrets like Quark keeps latinum but you know how to get out of a situation and you would figure something out. It was the best and most unexpected thing, to get out of solitary and see you as though you’d heard me wanting you to be there. And as to my parents—well, you of all people should know how many different ways a person can be trapped without it looking like a _conventional_ trap at all.” He pulled unnecessarily on his own shirtsleeves, tugging down the hems, before stepping around Garak to leave. When he was next to Garak, he paused, saying without looking at him, “We do all have our little abuses, Garak. I—I had hoped you would not add to mine. But then you have always loved to remind me of how naïve I am, I suppose.” He went to the door and opened it. “Please do get some sleep, Garak. Even the son of Tain needs sleep.”

He left without another word. Garak stayed awake until the morning.


	2. Chapter 2

If Garak counted the days that turned into weeks where he did not reach out to Bashir and Bashir said nothing to him, no one needed to know. The station swirled around him in the absurd mundanities that not even a war could stop—Quark’s schemes, Odo’s adventures in humanoid entanglement, O’Brien’s familial adversities, Bashir’s holosuite programs. Garak kept himself in his shop, stitching, fixing that which was much more easily fixed than what he had torn asunder.

Until Ghemor.

It was Major Kira who had told him the extent of it. Garak had known Ghemor was on the station, was dying; he had stolen a moment to talk with him, briefly, drinking in the shared experience of another Cardassian, uncharacteristically wishing he could help in the fruitless search for Iliana. Ghemor had had some measure of sorrow at the news of Tain’s death—not to comfort Garak, for he did not and could not know to offer it, but at the recognition that a Cardassian had passed. Even if Ghemor rejoiced at a Cardassia without Enabran Tain, they were too proud and communal a people to celebrate a death so horrifyingly inglorious as fading away in a Dominion camp.

“Ghemor was the best of you,” Kira had said as she stood awkwardly in Garak’s shop, uncertain of how to carry a grief she did not want, and Garak had agreed with her, had listened while she enumerated Ghemor’s qualities that made him a Cardassian she had trusted, wanted to respect. Garak had listened while she tallied the many ways Ghemor had, in the end, been a Cardassian who had lied, who had broken her people, who had not been worthy of her respect. And Garak had listened while she recognized that both pieces were true simultaneously; that Ghemor was complicated, as were so many Cardassians, and that she had loved him, after a fashion.

Kira had thanked Garak, uncertainly, for listening, and Garak had not told her that he was glad to see Ghemor getting the understanding he himself had rendered impossible from the only one he wanted to offer it.

“He misses you, you know,” Kira said as she turned to leave the shop, wearied by the waves of emotion and wondering whether it had been foolish to unpack her relationship with one Cardassian to another whom she trusted far less.

“I’m sorry?” Garak asked.

“Julian. I don’t know what happened between you after the augment business came out, but if you’re snubbing him for that, you’re dead wrong. He’s who he’s always been, and that’s fine.”

Garak smiled faintly to himself. “I am not ‘snubbing’ him, Major. I have no issue with the genetic revelations.”

“Then what went wrong? You two come back from the Dominion thick as thieves and then he gets outed and you fall off the map.”

“There are some things better left unsaid, I fear,” replied Garak in his best customer service voice.

Kira turned back to him, watching him thoughtfully. “Yes, there are. But you two are so—so _stupid_ , and so stubborn, and I don’t know about you but he has suffered enough. I would never tell him that, but he doesn’t deserve to have you keep jerking him around.”

Garak’s mouth tightened slightly in annoyance. “I am aware that he has suffered—”

“But you’re going to keep making him dance around you? He’s crazy about you, Garak, anyone with eyes can see that. He has been for years, and I don’t think _he_ knows it because he’s a brilliant doctor and an idiot as a person, but _you_ know it. Don’t you?”

“I would never presume such a thing—and I can’t believe that you would _want_ him to come to such a realization.”

Kira huffed in a humorless laugh. “I wouldn’t have, no. But that’s the thing—you can’t always control who you fall in love with, can you? Romantically, or—or platonically.” Her mind drifted for a moment and Garak let the silence sit. “Whatever you said to him, fix it,” she said at last. “Because we never know when we’re going to run out of time and not be able to say the things we always said we’d get to later.” She stared at him for a moment, challenging, and he stared back with blankly pleasant eyes. “Or don’t. Don’t do anything, keep making you _and_ him miserable, see if I care. Just don’t avoid him because you think it’s best for him. It’s not.” She stalked out of the shop and Garak sat heavily, processing what a strange afternoon it had been.

It took until late that evening for Garak to convince himself that it was not the worst idea he had ever had to go to Julian’s quarters. He was still quite sure it was in the top five, but he found himself on Julian’s doorstep nonetheless having checked to make sure there was only one bio sign inside—he had no intention of interrupting one of Julian’s many conquests, although he acknowledged to himself that Julian had had far fewer of those since he had returned from 371. Garak wondered whether it was having been seamlessly replaced and unmissed that curbed the doctor’s appetites or whether he truly had grown out of the desire to chase anything on legs.

“Come in,” came Julian’s voice, and the door slid open. Garak stepped in just far enough to let the door close behind him.

“Garak,” said Julian in surprise. He unwound himself from his seemingly impossible curl on the couch, setting his PADD on the cushion next to him. “What are you doing here?”

The prevarications died in Garak’s throat at the way Julian’s initial expression of hope was buried under his own version of the blank mask. Garak hated to see he had developed one, hated to be the cause of its appearance now, wanted the openness of the man back as the feast of emotions that it was, the kaleidoscope of all that Julian Bashir could experience from the smallest of things even though it meant he expected far too much from those less obvious around him. “I am apologizing,” Garak said, honestly.

“For what?”

“When last we spoke, I was—harsh. In point of fact, I was cruel—and deliberately so, betraying the confidence you had given me. I added to your abuses, to your suffering, and I did so knowingly. It was wrong. I offer my apology.”

Julian looked down at his hands, twisting in his lap. He sighed. “Sit, will you?” he said, gesturing to the couch.

Stiffly, Garak sat.

A silence stretched between them and Garak uncharacteristically wanted to fill it, to refuse to believe that this human who was normally so loquacious could have nothing to say to him. He checked the urge.

“My father only ever acknowledged me when I succeeded,” said Julian, still focused on his hands. “‘This is my son, finished with honors.’ ‘This is my son, won first last week.’ ‘This is my son, a future doctor.’ When I failed, I had no rank at all. ‘This is Jules; still working on the reading comprehension.’ ‘This is Jules, who hasn’t quite gotten to finishing that assignment yet.’ I knew the code by the time I was eight—these were the times I was allowed to be Richard Bashir’s progeny because I was succeeding as his legacy, and these were the times I was simply Jules, a boy my father had to suffer with until things could get better.” Julian looked up at Garak at last. “I don’t know what it was like to grow up with Tain who wouldn’t even acknowledge you when you succeeded. I don’t know what it was like to have to beg him on his deathbed for even the smallest admission that he was your father. But is it so surprising that I should want to make a good impression? That I should welcome with every fiber of me the minor miracle of my father saying to the whole station that I was his son without any particular catch of having done something worth noting?”

Garak blinked under the intensity of Julian’s gaze, swallowing down his protestation that he did not _beg_ , that he would never have _begged_ Enabran Tain. Except he had, hadn’t he? Just the once—yet another moment that was the only moment, the only memory he could keep of all of it having been for _something_. “Doctor, I should never have characterized you so. It is not a fault that you would want others’ good opinion.”

“But it is far weaker than you, who try so damn hard to convince yourself that you don’t care what anyone thinks of you. I’m sorry that I’m a fallible human being who wants to be liked.”

“Doctor—”

“Garak, what did you come here for? I know you said to apologize, but why here? Now?”

A thousand lies clicked through Garak’s mind, each simpler than the one before as the truth shyly presented itself. “The major told me some of what happened with Ghemor.”

Julian’s eyes unfocused and he looked off to the side. “Yes,” he said. “Yarim Fel. An unfortunate death.”

Garak recognized the doctor in the distance, the heart that animated Julian Bashir and that never accepted the death of a patient even when there was no other option. “One that was not of your doing, Doctor,” he said.

Julian shrugged. “And it got you thinking of your own secrets?”

“It reminded me of my own mistakes,” Garak replied. “I meant to hurt you that night, Doctor, and I succeeded.”

“You’re pretty terrible at apologies.”

Garak sighed. “I am not well-practiced.”

“Glad to help.”

“Doctor—”

“Garak, it’s late. I’ve heard your apology. I’m still trying to decide if I believe you mean it, but I do appreciate you coming to give it. Honestly. But you…” Julian stopped, laughed drily. “I’ve never known anyone who can wield words quite like you. You can build me an entire castle with them, filled with secret passageways and trick stairs and false walls and beautiful tapestries. You can tie me up with them so that the only thing I think about for the rest of the day is what you said to me and how many different things you meant. But now I know that you can hurt me with them—in your right mind, no drugs involved, and that…Well. I didn’t expect that it would hurt quite that much, I think.”

Garak nodded. “Thank you for hearing me out, Doctor,” he said, standing.

“Don’t leave this to me, Garak,” said Julian, looking up at him. “You’re sorry? Then show me. Coming to tell me that is a first step, and an important and good one—what’s done with words has to have words involved to be undone. But words do whatever you want them to, and I fall for them every time except I don’t, anymore. I love—your words, I love your mastery of language.” Julian’s hasty cover made Garak tilt his head in surprise. “But I need to know this is more than you smoothing over what you need or what you think I need. So don’t hand me this and then walk away like whatever happens next is entirely on me. You’ve held yourself apart for long enough, Garak, and just because I know some of your deepest secrets doesn’t mean you’ve actually told me a thing about you. Do you even know what you want from this? From me?”

“I need to know that someone forgives me,” said Garak, falling back on an old line.

Julian stood. “No, Garak. You already know that. I’ve never taken that back, even though I know a hell of a lot more now than I did then about just how much you were asking me to forgive. But I told you that this, that _us_ —that I want…That it could only have been you, at the camp, and not because you understood the wiring. You know where I stand, Garak. If you don’t want that, then say so and I’ll abide by it, but the next _kotra_ move is yours.”

Garak studied him a moment, seeing the lingering sadness and the weariness running like seams down the lanky frame. “Then I shall make it with great thought,” he said.

“Good.” Julian yawned. “Do get some sleep, Garak, would you? Doctor’s orders.” He laid a hand on Garak’s shoulder for the briefest instant, hazel eyes meeting blue with deliberation, and then Julian turned away to the bedroom and Garak left quietly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I very much need to write more Kira and Garak, I'm finding.
> 
> Also, do either of these fools ever clearly explain to each other what they want/need? They do not. Hence why this is three chapters instead of one.


	3. Chapter 3

Julian woke the next morning uncomfortably, realizing as he stretched his long limbs that he had slept curled tightly into himself. He did so often, these days, huddled against the chill of the camp that he had not actually felt for weeks now. He missed the solidness of Garak, the nights they had lain together in exhausted practicality as the labored huffs of Tain drifted over the uproarious snores of the Klingons. Garak had always risen first, unwilling to let anyone see even this need of warmth, of grounding in a world that closed in on him too quickly. He had held Julian tightly in his sleep and Julian had never felt so safe as he had in the unyielding arms of an ex-assassin. His younger self would have thrilled at the opportunity, but he was simply glad of the _reality_ of Garak after the time in solitary, the long days of uncertainty with patients he could not heal.

He stretched into the morning, unwinding the muscles that curled around the Cardassian that was no longer there, and thought about the night before. It was no surprise that Garak was rubbish at apologies, but it _was_ a surprise that Ghemor’s death had pushed him into an attempt at one. Was it the knowledge that the world they’d shared was gone? The reality of death’s inevitability, to-do lists and dreams be damned? Julian sighed as he thought of a conversation from several years prior with Garak about the Emily Dickenson poem, a conversation filled with Garak’s scoffing dismissal of a kind Death who stopped for anyone.

Well, Garak ought to know. He had heralded enough untimely appearances of the specter.

Rolling his eyes at himself, Julian got up and got dressed for the day. When he made it into his office, the on-duty nurse had smiled knowingly at him and Julian nodded quizzically back.

At his console waited a plate of scones and jam.

Julian’s mouth quirked. Perhaps Garak had meant the apology after all.

**

Over the next few days, other such gifts arrived in unexpected ways through Julian’s daily life—a holosuite session with Miles was paid for by a mysterious benefactor, a tailored version of the new uniform was folded and waiting on his couch when he awoke (prompting a mix of fondness and irritation that Garak had retained the habit of breaking into Julian’s quarters when it suited him), a new data rod with an invitation to discussion arrived on his desk. By the time he met Garak for lunch, Julian was torn between professing his embarrassed delight at being so quietly spoiled and giving the Cardassian a stern dressing-down for the unorthodox methods he employed with abandon.

He did neither, opting not to mention the ongoing apology at all, and Garak followed his silence and focused only on the book at hand. They quickly slid into their familiar banter until Julian, laughing, put a hand on Garak’s to punctuate a point.

Garak stiffened, pulling away from the touch.

Julian sighed. “My apologies, Garak,” he said. “I got rather carried away.”

“No matter, Doctor,” said Garak, his unruffled, amiable mask firmly in place. “I was simply startled. Now, you cannot possibly be serious that you believe this Tellarite character has any real merit in the ongoing scheme.”

*** 

A week later, Julian went off on a mission with the _Defiant_ with just enough notice to tell Garak he would miss their lunch. Garak contented himself with his work, his newest novel, his ever-growing attempts to stifle his own discomfort at being estranged from his homeworld and sidelined in this foolish war—but then, what war was wise?

Several days passed and Garak thought nothing of it.

Then a week.

Two.

Just under two and a half weeks after Julian’s hurried rescheduling with an apologetic grin and a small box of Delavian chocolates he had told Garak to ration until he returned, the _Defiant_ docked back at the station. Garak did not go to greet Julian, knowing he could not wait at the docking ring with the other family members, knowing he did not have that right and did not want that exposure. But waiting here, alone at a precisely angled table in Quark’s, felt achingly painful. What if he hadn’t come back at all? What if Garak would have to learn of Julian’s demise through the station grapevine, through the ongoing wait at this blasted table overseeing a Promenade devoid of that absurdly lithe form?

But there—Garak did not have time to lie to himself about how his heart jumped as he saw Julian cross from the turbolift, his back to Quark’s, his uniform looking decidedly worse for wear. Without having seen his face, Garak was uncertain whether the doctor had injuries of his own, but the fact that he was walking under his own power eased something Garak had not realized had constricted in his chest. He finished his drink and returned to his shop, contenting himself with the reassurance that the doctor, at least, was alive.

It was not enough.

After an afternoon that was far less productive than it needed to be, Garak realized that he had to actually _see_ Julian, to know that he was not only alive but well, to touch—

Garak let the fabric in his hands fall. To touch; how long had he told himself he was not allowed to want that?

_You know where I stand, Garak_ , he heard in his mind, and nothing else mattered than to stand there, in that same place. Garak put away his work and closed up shop.

He debated on breaking into Julian’s quarters and decided against it, reining in his own impatience and pushing the buzzer. He would have only just gotten off shift, Garak knew.

“Garak?” said Julian as he opened the door.

“May I come in?” asked Garak.

“I—um, sure,” said Julian, stepping aside, “but I’m afraid I won’t be good company. I’m dead tired.”

_But not dead_ , thought Garak, turning and examining the human. He was in a fresh uniform but had clearly not had the opportunity to do more than a quick repair of himself. There were light bruises he had missed, a few cuts that would heal quickly on their own.

“Garak?” asked Julian.

“Yes?”

“I asked what you needed?” 

_To know that you will be all right_. “I simply wanted to welcome you back, Doctor,” Garak said lightly. “I gather it was a longer mission than expected.”

Julian tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. “Counting the days, Garak?”

“You did tell me to ration the chocolates. We are both aware that I have a very unfortunate lack of self-control for such things, so I must protest how long you were away.”

A smile on the tired and bruised face. “Did you manage it?”

He still had half the box, realizing by the end of the first week that something had gone terribly wrong, hating the fear in his heart like some gul’s mistress. “I may have one or two remaining; it was quite a difficult task you set.”

“Why did you come here, Garak?” said Julian, crossing his arms.

Garak blinked at him. “Did you not just ask me that?”

“I did, and you gave me an evasive and untrue answer.”

“Hardly, Doctor!” said Garak in affected affront. “I did indeed wish to welcome you back.”

“Not good enough, Garak. You wouldn’t have come all the way to my quarters if you simply wanted to check in—you could have done that over the comm.” He uncoiled, pushing into Garak’s personal space. “What do you want, Garak?”

They were close enough that Garak could see the lines of weariness around Julian’s eyes and remember when he had seemed so impossibly young. While he was certainly still young by comparison, Julian had aged so much in the years Garak had known him. “To make the next move in the _kotra_ game,” said Garak.

Julian exhaled slowly. “And what move are you making?”

Garak studied him a moment before hesitantly reaching up and tracing one finger over a thin cut above Julian’s eyebrow. “I do not see the end of this game,” he whispered.

Julian reached a hand up to cover Garak’s against his face. “You don’t have to.”

“Then how will I avoid losing?”

The human stepped even closer, his thin chest nearly touching the Cardassian’s. “Can this not be winning enough, Elim?” he asked, his breath ghosting over Garak’s lips.

The distance was far too much and not nearly enough; Garak wanted to devour him, claim him, keep him safe from everything that threatened this marvelous being, but he knew that there would be so many more missions, there was still a war, this was a fool’s errand. “I am not free, Doctor.”

“Neither am I,” Julian replied. “So let us be captives together, hmm?” He closed the remaining distance and Garak’s whole world became Julian. 

The human’s lips were slightly cracked from the dry air of the ship; they felt almost like scales and Garak shivered at the thought. Julian’s hands slid across Garak’s waist, the pressure against the layers of fabric subtle and tantalizing. Garak’s hands were cupping Julian’s head and he did not remember reaching up with them, the human hair parting beneath his fingertips like a thousand strands of slightly-oiled silk. The skin of Julian's temples under Garak’s thumbs was warm and the pulse underneath that quickened with Julian’s breaths broke some last mechanism of control in Garak, the many walls he had built against this very moment melting under the heat of the mouth sliding its way down Garak’s jawridge.

_Enough_ , Garak snarled, and it may have been aloud as he all but dragged the doctor to his bedroom. Julian went, grinning, his hands undoing the fastenings of his uniform, the grey-and black jacket falling away as Garak’s legs hit the edge of the bed. Garak divested Julian of the blue undershirt and snaked forward to _bite_ at the joining of Julian’s neck and shoulder, only just reminding himself not to use his full force on the ridgeless human. Julian’s gasp sent tongues of fire through Garak’s body and Garak pivoted them, pushing Julian backwards onto the bed and tracing his teeth down the scaleless, hair-covered chest in the pattern of the ridges he didn’t have, discovering this body so different from his own.

“ _Garak_ ,” moaned Julian, writhing, his hands reaching for any part of Garak he could touch, weaving his fingers into the hair like overlapping layers of feathers for the dishevelment he had wanted so long. The Cardassian’s lips were ever-so-slightly cool on his skin, a few degrees of temperature difference he knew no normal human would register, and he allowed himself to enjoy for just this moment the enhancements that told his body to raise goosebumps down his arms, a new sound in the cacophony of sensation engulfing his body.

Garak reached Julian’s trousers and hesitated, the sensible part of his mind taking the momentary pause to leap forward in alarm and dismay.

“Garak?” breathed Julian, raising himself up on his elbows. “Is—” he cleared his throat—“Is everything okay?”

Almost rolling his eyes at the absurdity of such a broad question, Garak placed his hands on Julian’s thighs. “Any further is a distance from which we cannot come back,” he said.

Julian pushed himself up and Garak sat back, idly registering that he was kneeling in front of Julian and he did not mind the position as much as he probably should.

“Garak, I don’t _want_ to come back from this,” said Julian, carding a hand again through Garak’s hair. Garak decidedly did _not_ lean into the caress down his aural ridge. “I want this. I want _you_ ; it just took me nearly losing everything several times over to figure that out.”

Garak ran his hands over Julian’s arms. “You changed texture.”

Julian laughed. “They’re called goosebumps; they happen when dopamine and adrenaline get released into the system. Right now, it means I’m happy and my body knows it.”

Looking pointedly at the rising tent in Julian’s trousers, Garak said, “Your body is very loud in announcing itself.”

“Yes, well, humans are not very physiologically sneaky,” smiled Julian. “Means you have to do a lot less guesswork, though, so that should be good for you.”

_Anything of yours is good for me_ , thought Garak, his hands absently drawing half-moons on Julian’s slacks.

“Garak?” asked Julian uncertainly. “If _you_ don’t want to go any further—”

“Doctor, ‘want’ is perhaps not the best way to frame the question at the moment.”

Julian grinned, cupping Garak’s face in his hands and tilting his head so that he could look him in the eye. “First, you simply have to call me Julian if you’re going to kneel in front of me like that.” Garak huffed. “Second,” continued Julian, “I know we’re both running a whole simulation’s worth of calculations right now about wildly different things but I’m pretty sure you didn’t come barging into my quarters after a mission that did not go well simply because you missed having a pretty face at the lunch table, so ‘want’ might be the least complicated framing we have at the moment and I’m willing to roll with it.”

Garak pursed his lips. “I do not think you are ‘pretty.’”

“Handsome, then,” said Julian, leaning forward and running his nose along the framing ridge of Garak’s _ChUfa_. Garak shuddered at the sensation. “Ohh, sensitive spot?” Julian asked teasingly, nuzzling the ridge again and then dragging his lips lightly over the concave scales.

Garak growled, surging up against Julian and shoving him back onto the bed, biting his way down Julian’s long neck to the sharp collarbones underneath that beautifully browned skin. _Sharp but so easily breakable_ , said his treacherous mind and he paused, resting his _ChUfa_ against Julian’s sternum.

“Garaaaaaaaak,” groaned Julian, “what now?” He reached up to scratch Garak’s shoulder ridges and Garak shivered under the touch but remained still.

“You have suffered enough,” said Garak to Julian’s chest framed between his grey arms.

Julian’s arms dropped, his body falling limp as though someone had cut through his muscles. Garak looked up into Julian’s piercing stare. “And you think teasing me like this isn’t suffering?” Julian said.

Garak sat up, realizing he was sitting in between Julian’s legs, wondering when those long extensions had wrapped around him so. “I—I was reminded that you have suffered enough, that I should not add to that.”

“By whom?”

“A—friend.”

Julian sighed heavily and banged his head back on the pillow beneath him. “And did said _friend_ tell you that it would cause _more_ suffering if you fucked me as I have so clearly been asking you to do?”

Garak blinked. “They decidedly did not.”

“ _Then why are we having this conversation._ ”

“Doctor—”

“Look,” said Julian, setting his heels on the bed to push himself up to lean on his elbows, staring down the line of his own chest at Garak perched just beyond his still-tented trousers. “I don’t know what the context of that conversation was and I doubt you’ll tell me exactly who that ‘friend’ was, but I actually don’t care. The idea that anyone can say whether I have suffered ‘enough’ is preposterous, especially when it’s a relatively recent thing that anyone on this damnable gossip bucket knows that I’ve suffered anything at all—which is not how I would characterize my life, anyway, but I’m using your words. _And_ the idea that _I_ have suffered to whatever quantity coming from _you_ is absolutely rich, considering I have literally _watched_ you suffer several times over in the years we’ve known each other and I have enough of your stories pieced together to know that what I’ve seen is barely a drop in the bucket of what you’ve been through.”

Garak opened his mouth to respond and Julian held up a hand. “No, I am decidedly not finished. We’re not going to trade amounts of suffering or not suffering in the middle of a bloody war where people I know are dying every other week and people I don’t much more often than that, and we’re _especially_ not going to trade while I’m underneath you, shirtless, on my bed, in my quarters, as I’ve fantasized about for bloody _years_ at this point because the fantasy ends with you fucking me so well I see stars on the wall _without_ the porthole, not with you deciding that you need to protect me by walking away.” Julian reached out and grasped Garak’s hand, bringing it to his own chest where the human heart beat and Garak could feel the pulse beneath the ribs of that absurdly thin body. “I want this, Garak, _Elim_ , in case I haven’t made that clear. I want you inside me with whatever appendages you have under those eighteen layers of clothing, and if that’s not possible then with your hands or some other creative substitute. I want to feel you move in the most intimate way possible because you are fascinating and beautiful and I don’t give a damn about suffering, not tonight, not when we’ve finally gotten this far and I’m exhausted but here and I lost so many people and one day it might be me that I can’t save and one day it might—it might,” Julian cleared his throat and tightened his hand on Garak’s, “it might be you, and if this is the only night I get with you before that happens, then let it be a night I take smiling. Now, are you amenable to exploring me from the inside or would you like to reverse those roles or would you like to leave now? Because you’re right, if you don’t want this, now is the time to stop.”

Garak stared at his fingers on Julian’s heart, the warmth above and below his scales as Julian’s hand held his there. “Julian, I cannot see the end of this.”

Julian rolled his eyes. “I told you before, you obstinate lizard, _don’t try_. Give me tonight and don’t try to weigh it in light of tomorrow.” He scooted up further until he was sitting with Garak, hands still entwined. “Elim, please. Give me tonight?”

How could Garak refuse something so beautiful, a request so aligned with what he wanted? “Tonight,” he agreed, and Julian grinned, kissing him fervently, pulling them back down, covering himself with Garak. They fought through the rest of their clothing, trading bites and kisses with each new patch of skin and scales bared to each other’s gaze and Garak had never felt so shy as Julian praised each new ridge with clever fingers and an eager tongue. By the time they were both naked, Julian was covered in goosebumps and Garak was half everted, each of them fascinated by the other’s body’s blatant demand for more, for this, for the scratch of grey on bronze. Julian dragged his tongue over Garak’s _ChUva_ and Garak everted the rest of the way, his _ajan_ flushed wide under Julian’s curious hands.

“Fuck, yes,” said Julian, “this is so much better than what I’d imagined.”

“Imagine me often, have you?” said Garak, panting as Julian laved his way across the ridges above his hips.

“You will never have any idea,” said Julian. “Can we do this, Elim? Can this go in me?”

“I do believe so, yes.”

" _Fantastic_.” Julian clambered back up and Garak briefly wondered when he had gotten on the bottom. “I have to prepare so we don’t tear anything, but don’t worry,” he reassured Garak’s look of alarm, “we’re not doing anything I’m not built to do. I’m just not built to do it quickly.” He paused with a tube of something in his hand. “I mean, I’m assuming you haven’t been with a human before. Have you?”

Garak smiled lazily as he stroked Julian’s thigh, delighting in the goosebumps that followed his fingers’ path. “Would you be jealous?”

“Well, I would stop explaining things you probably already know.” He grinned and ducked his head at Garak’s raised eyeridge. “And yeah, I might be a bit jealous, perhaps.”

“Then let me rest your mind,” said Garak, sliding his hands around to Julian’s back and cupping the bend of him, “you are indeed my first human.”

“What an honor,” said Julian, not quite able to conceal the honest thrill in his voice. He leaned down and kissed Garak again as he guided Garak’s hands to his entrance, teaching him with half-finished sentences breathed into his mouth about one finger at a time, slowly stretching, the heat and the muscle learning that the intrusion was welcome. By three fingers Julian was panting against Garak’s neck. “In,” he demanded, “want you in.”

Garak complied, reaching down for his own very eager self to slide into that trembling hole and it took everything he had to go slowly as Julian’s body pulled him deeper, the joining of Julian’s skin so warm it burned like wildfire through Garak’s limbs from the flashpoint of their connection. He bottomed out and they breathed together, the ridges now inside Julian brushing lightly with each inhale that moved them.

“Fuck, _yes_ ,” sighed Julian, and he began to move above Garak, his mouth on Garak’s shoulders and his hands running down the mountain ranges outlining Garak’s ribs as Garak surged into him, the feeling of being inside this beautiful man short-circuiting Garak’s brain until he flipped them over, driving into Julian in crescendos of rhythmic pulses and rolls, Julian’s vocalizations bouncing off the walls in time with the sound of scale abrading skin in the pleasure-pain of their embrace and Garak felt the rain building within him as Julian reached up and kissed him bitingly, one hand on the back of Garak’s neck and the other dragging a warm stripe down Garak’s _ChUfa_ and Garak fell over the edge, pouring himself into Julian as he reached between them and circled Julian once, twice, a third time into oblivion as the pair collapsed into each other.

Breathing deeply, Garak pulled out and grimaced at the mess. He moved to get up and clean but Julian held onto his shoulder. “Not yet,” he whispered. “We worked hard to get here; let me feel debauched for a moment. I earned it.”

Garak rolled his eyes at such a statement but returned to lying on top of Julian, soaking up the warmth of that resilient body. Julian turned his head and kissed Garak’s jawridge, nuzzling into it with his nose. “Whatever else happens,” he said softly, “know that I am _definitely_ up for doing this again someday.”

Garak’s chuckle bounced against Julian’s torso. “I was quite pleased by it as well, my dear,” he said.

Julian trailed idle fingers down the scales on Garak’s back and the pair did not think about whatever else might happen, about what suffering was yet to come, about anything other than the feeling of traded touches light as unspoken reassurances, _this was good, you are good, we are enough for now._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huzzah sexy times! Considering this was meant to be a PWP one-shot, I'm pleased with how Julian especially rounded himself out as a strong self-advocate. I love the trade they manage between them of knowing that each is a mess but they'll work with that, somehow. Thank you for cheering them on with me!


End file.
